


Masks

by sidana



Series: The Peter Black Stories [8]
Category: Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter - Laurell K. Hamilton
Genre: M/M, Spoilers: Serpentine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-10
Updated: 2019-09-10
Packaged: 2020-10-14 01:30:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20592431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sidana/pseuds/sidana
Summary: When Peter takes Nathaniel up on an offer to go clubbing the next time he's in St. Louis, things end up going in unexpected directions.





	Masks

Masks

Disclaimer- not my characters, not my universe. I’ll put everyone back where I found them when I’m done playing with them. 

Notes- A series of ongoing Peter-centered AU side stories to the main Anita Blake timeline and set a little after ‘Serpentine’. 

**********

“You’re not doing badly there,” Jake said. 

“Says the guy who is standing above me after dumping my ass onto the mat for what was it? Ten or eleven times in a row there?’ Peter said, looking up at the other man and the larger gym area underneath the Circus of the Damned. 

“I’ve been at it for a lot longer than you have. Take five and come back.” 

Peter got up and made his way to the wall where he had left the backpack that had served as his carry-on for the flight to St. Louis that morning as well his gym bag for the afternoon workout. He popped the mouth guard out with one hand and fished a full metal water bottle out of a side pocket with the other, trying to drink just enough to get rehydrated but not so much that any excess water would slosh in his gut when the workout started up again. He had just tucked the bottle back into his bag when he saw a pair of familiar faces step briefly into the gym. 

“Good to see you,” he said to Anita and Bobby Lee as he gave a friendly wave. She seemed surprised to see him here. 

“And good to see you, though a bit surprised you’re in the gym. You’re still going to make it to dinner out at the house by seven?” 

“Yeah. Most of my stuff’s in Emmanuel’s SUV’s and he’s going to drop me off when we’re through here. I just needed to get in a good workout here first.” 

“No days off?” 

“It’s not so much days off, it’s that back home, there’s a lot of pretending that nothing’s changed with me, and that includes keeping it basic human speed when I’m training. This is the first chance I’ve had to really go full out and it’s been a lesson on how to handle moving at new top speed without screwing up my balance.” 

“And is it working?” She always was polite about asking how his training was going even when he knew she didn’t really approve of all of it. 

“After the first fifteen minutes or so, I largely managed to stop tripping over my own two feet, but I’m glad I’ve got a couple more days here to work on things even if it’s not enough to really get good new muscle memory for it all.” 

At that point, Jake called him back to the mat where he was standing with another man who wasn’t that much older than Peter was. Peter put the mouth guard back in and adjusted his other protective gear. Enhanced healing or not, he could already feel the sore spot growing on the left side of his rib cage; he wanted to do what he could to avoid any more of that. 

“Okay Grant, three rounds with Peter here,” Jake said. 

“I haven’t had time to warm up yet,” Grant said. Peter eyed him a little closer and came up with around six feet tall and enough muscle for Peter to know he worked out a good amount. 

“The bad guys aren’t always going to give you a chance to warm up,” Jake said. The tone in his voice made Peter think that he was going to be Grant’s object lesson for the day. “Step back and ready.” 

Peter almost instantly moved away from the other man and brought his hands up into position. Grant moved like a shifter, and Peter couldn’t match his strength and arm wrestle to the mat. The best option was to start out defensively, keep a little bit of distance between them, and look for something he could exploit. 

With a groan, Grant got himself into position. 

“Go.”

Grant advanced toward him, and Peter carefully edged back a few more steps, being careful to stay aware of the edges of the mat. He took a first careful swing at Peter, who moved away from the punch rather than blocking it. 

“Afraid of me?” 

“You can hit hard.” 

His words seemed to give Grant confidence, and the other man closed the gap with Peter again. He threw a few more punches that Peter managed to dodge, and then tried to get fancy with a side kick toward his knee. Seizing his chance, Peter pivoted full speed at that point, going full into his torso and knocking him back to the ground before the other man could realize what had happened. He dropped onto Grant’s chest and put a forearm at Grant’s throat, forcing the other man to tap the mat. Balance. He had spent the afternoon on balance and that had helped him see his chance to put the other guy down. 

“What the?…”

“Up and ready,” Jake said from the side of the mat. 

While Grant may have been surprised by Peter’s speed at first, he was also capable of learning as he went on and he managed to take the second round when Peter got too close to the other man while trying to land a punch. The third round went to Peter after he took a bad step, Grant saw that as a possible weakness that wasn’t, and Peter managed to recover quickly enough to drop a shoulder and get him to the ground in a judo throw. 

“Point and win,” Jake said, The look on his face made Peter think Grant had just failed some bigger test. 

“And the point was made to me,” Grant said. “You feel human but a human can’t move like you did. What are you?” 

“A double exposure to lycanthropy within a few day’s time can have some interesting side effects,” Peter said. He’d had time to think up the right phrase to explain himself for when that question got asked. 

“No shit,” Grant said. 

“Peter, we’re through for now. There are some other things I need to go over with Grant,” Jake said. 

Stripping off assorted gear, Peter found Emmanuel in the weight room, talking briefly about timelines and getting over to the house. He found himself with about twenty minutes to fill and decided on running. It was definitely not his favorite way of doing cardio; he generally found it too boring compared to something like pick-up basketball or soccer. But it was better than going into the weight room and looking stupid because he could lift nowhere close to what the wererats in there were doing. 

He dutifully got in about three and a half miles and then headed off to the locker room, staking a claim on a rare private shower area there. There may have been plenty of guys in the gym with worse scars than he had, but that didn’t mean he had to go show off his own. A quick cleanse had him putting street clothes on and contemplating trying to find a hair dryer when he heard the voices on the other side of the curtained area.

‘How was I supposed to know?” Peter recognized the voice as Grant’s from earlier. He felt a moment of regret that he’d left his weapons kit in the back of Emmanuel’s Highlander along with his other checked bag since the only things from his backpack he could possibly weaponize were the metal water bottle and a razor that was probably too small and too hard to take apart quickly to be useful here. 

“It’s not about being all knowing; it’s about learning the back stories around here because they can be important, of which there are many including some that go back a few centuries and others that are more recent like, I dunno, how the Harlequin ended up in St. Louis including the supporting roles that a certain Death’s apprentice played in it all. And that the apprentice now works for the rats from time to time.” Peter didn’t know the other man’s name but he recognized the voice from the gym earlier. 

“And you Miguel?” Grant asked.

“I was still human and over in the sandbox when the Harlequin shit went down, but I do know Peter’s specific rep, and how in general the humans we hire for out of town work have to be good since part of their job is back-stopping for us on full moon nights. Plus, it’s not like some random guy is just going to wander in from the street, make it down the stairs, and just happen to be in the gym here during training hours. If someone doesn’t seem to belong down here and is being treated like a friendly anyways, there’s usually a reason for it and if you don’t know the reason, proceed with caution.”

“I want to be here, and I want to learn how to stop fucking up, but..” Grant’s voice faded as the other three men went further into the locker room and Peter grabbed his backpack, went the other direction and found Emmanuel. 

“Thanks again for playing chauffeur while I’m in town,” he said. 

“Claudia’s instructions were that since it’s at least partially my fault that Martzi is on maternity leave and we were short one person who could reasonably pass for human for this job, then I could darn well at least play driver for her replacement,” he said as they went in the direction of the stairs out. “And since we’re still massively overstaffed at the mothership, I think part of it is just Claudia being glad that there’s something she can tell someone to do that doesn’t seem like total busywork.” 

“Overstaffed? How’d that happen?” Peter said and Emmanuel caught him up on the situation in town as they went up the damn stairs. 

Eventually they did get out of the circus and into the sunlight. Emmanuel hit the key fob to unlock the back of his SUV and Peter stashed his backpack along with his Pelican case and duffel bag in the covered back cargo area. 

“Martzi sent a text saying that UPS dropped off the box with your other gear at out house earlier.”

“I appreciate that. Anita’s already probably going to be giving me more of a frowny face than she realizes because the gun case reminds her that she doesn’t like my career choices. The rest of it would seem like I was rubbing it in or something,” he said as both men got into the SUV. 

“I’m kind of surprised you get that kind of reaction from Anita. Usually she’s really positive about us finding quality people who are competent and not assholes, and you fit those parameters well. And understands that yeah, we do get hurt sometimes when we’re on a job so if it was about how you got cut up before…”

“It’s kind of complicated,” Peter said, trying to come up with a properly redacted explanation of the tension between him and Anita as Emmanuel started up the vehicle and got onto the road. “And there are like ten dozen different layers of op sec involved so I have to give a summary of extreme vagueness. I’ll say that I was in trouble, and Anita was part of the rescue party. but they didn’t get there until I’d been roughed up. So she has this guilt thing about how I turned out how I did because she didn’t get there in time to fully save me, and my take on it all is that what happened wasn’t what broke me. It just kind of sharpened what was already inside me and, hey, she’s also one of the big reasons why I lived to see my fifteenth birthday so she should just stop blaming herself for me being me already.” 

“Sounds awkward. If you want, you can crash with Martzi and me until you ship out for work. We’ve got the extra space and would enjoy the company. And it would make it really easy for me to get you back to the Circus for workouts and job briefings. Easy to justify it if I say it’s saving me some driving.” 

“I appreciate the offer, but I think it’ll be okay. And Nathaniel was the one who put out the original invitation to come stay at the house when I was in town, and I’d hate to bail on him. I know I’m talking entirely wrong species and all but he’s like Tigger from Winnie the Pooh and this really positive person despite all the shit he’s dealt with in his life. I’m definitely not the shiny happy person type, and it helps sometimes when I spend time with people who are.” Like Becca, who was always a bright sunbeam in his life no matter what else was going on. 

“Still, if you need out, call, text, or send a carrier pigeon, and I’ll come pick you up.”

“Will do,” he said. He had made friends among the rats, and in the time he had been on the bench until he had come to the conclusion along with Claudia and Freddo that he was still human enough to do that kind of work for them, he had been missing not only the jobs themselves but the people he’d worked with on the road like Emmanuel and Martzi.

******

“I’m glad you could make it.” Nathaniel gave him just enough time to put the Pelican case and duffel bag down but not enough time to take his backpack off before he grabbed Peter in a tight hug. 

“Like I’d pass up a friend offering to show me a good time in one of the great party towns in America? If I did, I’d have to hand in my guy card or something,” Peter said, getting a laugh out of Nathaniel, 

“Let me show you to your guest room,” Nathaniel said, taking the duffel bag but not the gun case. “If there’s anything you discover you forgot, we try to keep the bathroom there pretty well-stocked. Just dig around for what you need and help yourself.” 

Nathaniel deposited him in the guest room with instructions to come find him when he’d unpacked. The room turned out to have a king-sized bed with a blue and purple-striped comforter, a while dresser, and a closet open far enough to show some space available amid stacked boxes shoved to one side of it. Tucking the gun case behind where Nathaniel had dropped the duffle bag, Peter made his way into the bathroom to look for a hair dryer, finding stashes of diapers from newborn to toddler size, four different sorts of feminine hygiene products, condoms, lube, and about a hundred little shampoo and conditioners along the way. Figuring he would be messing with his hair more later, he just gave it a token pass with the dryer to get rid of the damp and a little bit of gel to keep the cowlick from standing up and followed the voices to the kitchen. 

“Anything I can do to help?” he said as he stuck his head into the room where Nathaniel stood in front of the stove as two other men worked on reducing meat and other food items to component parts at the adjacent kitchen counters. 

“How are you knife skills, kid?” Nicky Murdoch said, not stopping in his quest to decimate a large piece of beef into something else. 

“Pretty good actually. Child of a woman who spent many years as a very busy single parent so there was much ‘Petey, put down the video game controller and help me get dinner on the table’ in my younger years.” 

“If no one’s gotten to the green beans yet,” Nathaniel said. 

“Right here,” the other man in the kitchen, someone around his own age with blue black hair pulled back tight into a ponytail, said. He put down an ear of corn he had been shucking to pass Peter a container of beans, a knife, and a bowl. “I’m Syn by the way.”

“I was guessing as much. Nice to meet someone I’ve heard a lot of goods things about,” he said, putting everything Ted and Edward had ever taught him about keeping a polite and professional face into play. Unlike with Nicky who just radiated sociopath, there was absolutely no reason to dislike Syn but he couldn’t help that little bit of jealousy that bubbled up about how Syn got to have sex with Anita and that Anita was always going to view Ted’s stepson in a totally platonic way. 

“Same here. But one thing I did wonder about. How did Ted meet your mom anyways?” Sin asked.

“After Dad died, Mom spent about a year just concentrating on getting our lives back on track, but she eventually started dating again. She was really careful about not letting her dates meet Becca or me until it seemed like there was actually a relationship with a decent guy there but there were a few that slipped through. Like the one who actually bragged in front of me how he’d disinherited his daughter when she came out as a lesbian and Mom dumped him that night when we were all out for pizza because she didn’t put up with hate. Or the guy previous to Ted who seemed really nice to all of us, at least up until the point where Mom refused to dip into the part of the life insurance money that was supposed to be for Becca and my college funds in order to help prop up his own business and Mom realized he was just trying to scam what he though was a wealthy widow rather than there being a real love connection. 

When that fell apart, Sheriff Martinez, who was a friend of the family since before I was born, ended up setting Mom up with the guy who was supposed to be this nice upstanding guy he knew who worked on preternatural crimes,” 

“Who turned out to be Edward,” Syn said.

“Who was so perfectly playing the role of Ted then that it was like everyone else was shortly cheering for it to work because they seemed to be getting along so indeedly perfectly.”

“But not you?” Nicky said. 

“No one else seemed to be picking up on how Ted, with his niceness, charm and that damn cowboy hat, was also a predator, and that predator was getting way too close to my mother. And I was twelve years old then and if I said anything about it, no one was going to take it seriously. They’d say I was just being jealous or too suspicious after the previous scammer or that I was just too young to understand how adult relationships work so all I could really do was to be quiet and try to make sure he didn’t hurt Mom.” 

“And it’s not like that now,” Nathaniel said. 

“Yeah, part of it was learning that whatever else Ted was, he was a hundred percent on Team Parnell.” Since it was easy to talk and trim, the bean bowl was starting to get full.

“Part of it?” Syn said.

“And another part was, well, I got co-opted. When you have too much fucking knowledge and experience with how dangerous the world can be and then Batman appears and offers to teach you how to be Robin, what else can you do except say yes and thank you?”

“You couldn’t have found a better mentor,” Nicky said. Nicky was always polite to him even when he couldn’t really hide how he didn’t like how close that other predator had gotten to Anita. 

“No, I couldn’t have.” 

Peter was spared further conversation along that line by Anita’s arrival into the house. He got a friendly pat on the shoulder and then concentrated on finishing off the beans as she exchanged decidedly non-platonic kisses and hugs with the other men in the kitchen and was able to hand the bowl off to Nathaniel for steaming just as she finished with him. She came up for air with a big grin on her face and Peter found himself smiling along with her. 

“It’s really good to see you like this you know, all happy, Most of the time we’ve been in the same room it’s because you and Ted are together for business. And that one time in Santa Fe when you were there for the bridal shop stuff and as much as you were trying to not show it, you were clearly having this fantasy about borrowing Ted’s flamethrower and taking it to a rack of prom and bridesmaid dresses, smell of burning satin be damned.” 

She laughed and what started out as cheerful small talk followed for a bit before she unknowingly stepped on one of his emotional landmines. 

“I don’t remember if I said it before, but I am sorry you weren’t allowed to enlist after what happened in Florida. I know you were going back and forth with that and college and it’s never good to lose options like that.” 

“That door was closed before Florida anyways.” 

“You were sure about college then? That’s good.” There was still a little smile on Anita’s face because she so much wanted him to take what she saw as an escape path away from that part of Ted’s life.

“Not good because it wasn’t really my choice. A couple weeks before that, I got my letter saying that the Army wasn’t going to give me my psych waiver.” He didn’t bother trying to keep the bitterness out of his voice.

“Psych waiver?”

“Yeah, the question on the enlistment questionnaire about whether you have been under the treatment of a mental health professional and if so please explain the circumstances. Apparently the modern Army regards it as no big deal if you were feeling a little blue about your parent’s divorce and wanted to talk about it but ‘I was in therapy because I kill people’ is a big disqualifying factor these days.” 

“Their loss,” Nicky said. Damn the man for giving Peter reasons not to hate him. 

“You didn’t say anything to me before,” Nathaniel said. 

“I was not going to say anything to anyone then because I wanted the wedding to be perfect for Mom and Ted and I was not going to let my personal shit be any kind of distraction.” And because he’d been trying to bury how it had felt when an organization that taught people how to kill thought he was too risky to try to take on. “And I’m glad I didn’t given how many other things ended up going wrong before it all became right.”

“Nicky is right; it’s their loss. Did you tell them afterwards?” 

“I talked to Ted when we got back, and he told me to not even think of trying to appeal that like the letter said I could.”

“How’s that?” Nathaniel asked. 

“You know how there are certain parties that have an interest in Anita because she has some of the physical advantages of lycanthropy without changing shape?” 

“Van Cleef?” Anita said. 

“You invoked the name of Voldemort in the flesh and not me,” Peter said. 

“C’mon Syn. It’s time to go outside and fire up the grill for meat on a stick,” Nicky said said as he picked up a dish full of beef and kebob skewers, and headed out the back door. Syn took a tray of vegetables and followed. 

“I know that name too,” Nathaniel said. Peter felt glad he could stay around then. 

“Not too long after we got back from Florida, I had one of those conversations with Edward that started out with putting the cell phones in a special box in my SUV in the driveway and a lesson on how to sweep a structure for listening devices. And then there was the conversation about how Voldemort would really like to get his hands on people like Anita and me because we’d be strategic assets in his personal war against the weird. And enough about what Voldemort does and how hard it was for Edward to break away from him to make me damn sure I want no part of it.”

“That’s more than he’s ever told me,”Anita said. 

“I think Edward was actually scared about what could happen if I got approached by a certain little sphere of the military who didn’t seem to care about the psych waiver issue and what would happen to me if I accepted that offer because it would come with a price he doesn’t think I’m willing to pay.”

“And from what i do know, I fully agree with him,” Anita said. 

“Call it a consensus then,” Peter said. 

“And yet you’re here and getting ready to go on a job for the rats rather than getting ready for your first semester of college,” 

“Actually it’s both. I’m signed up for three classes that meet online. Core classes in English, history and psychology because I’m not sure yet what I want to do about a major.” 

“And if you do figure out a major, you’ll go full time?” He couldn’t really blame her for pushing; he just wished he could make her understand. 

“If I can do pretty much all of it online and keep working.” 

“Ted and Donna have said you’ve got a good college fund so you don’t have to do that.” 

“Part of it is that Edward thinks I’m a little bit better protected if it’s known I’m actively working for the rats. Not as likely to be approached by certain groups if I already have an affiliation with another one, and it’s actually not a bad thing if the impressions of me are bit blurry and there might be an assumption that I’m working for the rats because I am one. And the rats have a list of things they will and won’t do, It’s not as long as Mom would like but it’s enough that I can take an order, do it, and live with myself afterwards.” 

“Ted said something similar about the rats’ standards when he called to give me a heads up that you’d be working for them. And that I’d owe Edward a favor if I tried to interfere between you and your employer.” 

He wanted to ask her what she’d thought about that and if she would have gotten him fired without the Edward threat but didn’t because he wasn’t sure he’d really like an honest answer. 

“And part of it is that I actually really like the job. Granted it’s mostly surveillance at this point. People look at me and see a human college kid with ear buds mostly looking down at his phone and then figure I’m not that interesting. Freddo’s actually got a ‘kids these days’ rant about how easier we have compared to the old days of watching when he never got to hide behind a smartphone. ”

“I noticed you said ‘mostly’ but I know better than to ask more.”

“Thanks. If it makes you feel better, what’s outside the ‘mostly’ is still less dangerous than it would be if I’d enlisted and ended up in the sandbox. ” 

“Not really,” she said as Nathaniel shot her a look. 

“And I like that I’m not alone out there and getting to be part of a team I trust to have my six. When I’m on the job, I don’t want to say its peaceful but, I dunno, maybe properly grounded and centered in a way I just can’t get when I’m going to school and trying to not look behind my back when I stop off for a burger because with my dumb luck of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, I’d probably walk into some sort of armed robbery attempt. So much of the bad stuff in my life was random like that.”

“Except for your first trip to St Louis,” Anita said. 

“Which was worth every single minute of pain and rehab because it was me getting to take action and not just reacting to a random bad event,” Peter said. 

“And you don’t get to tell him how he feels about that,” Nathaniel said. 

Anita opened her mouth, closed it again as if she was rethinking what to say and then before she could speak, Nicky reappeared in the kitchen and Peter lost all interest in serious conversation. 

*******

Not too long after that, more people started to show up and Anita went from worried about him back to happily surrounded by her tribe. Peter found himself dragged into the scrum as well. He got to dangle a giggling toddler over one shoulder, decided he couldn’t really hate Syn even if he was sleeping with Anita, got coaxed into trying some sort of Moroccan carrot and raisin side dish that he had to admit tasted good, and got dragged briefly outside for his opinion on the landscaping for some reason he would probably never have a clue about. 

Then people started to filter out to the sound of a full dishwasher running in the kitchen and he ducked back into the guest room to get ready to go out. Nathaniel had given him the name of the club they’d be going to- Carnivale- and he’d looked up pictures inside of it and learned that while it was definitely trendier than anything in New Mexico, it didn’t seem too out there. So he changed his shirt for a dark blue one that showed that he worked out just a little bit better, spiked his hair up, and added a quick bit of eyeliner. His work boots looked modern enough that he could get away with doing a bit of play in them, and he pocketed some ear plugs from the gun case to handle any stupidly loud music contingencies. There was something to be said when he could figure out how to make stuff from his work kit multitask. Peter Black’s wallet with a driver’s license that said he was legal to drink went into the other pocket, and he headed back into the living room where a smaller crowd remained. 

“A little different look there,”Anita noted. 

“I looked up the club we’re going to and it seemed like a place to put a little effort into things. Plus, people like to take pictures with Nathaniel and put them on social media and I’m a guy who tries to keep my normal look from being too distinctly on social media even if I’m only in the background. ” He could see her start to frown a little and tried to correct the mistake he’d made in reminding her of that side of him. “Ted taught me how to do the eyeliner.” 

“Seriously?” Anita said. He knew she liked it when he shared Ted stories with her. 

“Not really. It was actually Uncle Otto,” he said, giving her his best face of innocence. She cracked before he did and he got a chuckle out of her. “Okay, it actually was Ted, who is really good at subtle the make-up as disguise thing when he’s motivated. You should have seen him and Mom last fall when they had some sort of fancy costume benefit they went to where he was Daniel Craig era James Bond and Mom was a Bond girl. They looked really good together.” 

“Is there evidence of this?” Anita said. 

“I have pictures I can send you or Nathaniel.” 

“I’m in,” Nathaniel said. He had also taken the chance to change into something a little more trendy than the ‘Kiss the Cook’ apron and old jeans he had been wearing earlier. There was a knock on the door, and Marco, one of the bodyguards, let a big blonde man into the living room. 

“Sorry I missed dinner. Had some stuff at work the ran late and I had to grab a burger on the way over,” he said as he gave Nathaniel one of those quick shapeshifter hugs. 

“Dev, this is Peter,” Nathaniel began the introductions.

“Good to meet you,” He got a firm but not crushing handshake as his greeting. It hit the right note in terms of confidence rather than insecurity. 

“Peter, this is Dev. He mostly harmless to friends of the family but does have a thing for seducing straight guys,” Nathaniel continued. 

“Hey!” Dev said, trying to give an innocent face but it didn’t quite work. 

“If he bothers you, just tell him to go away and the fourth or fifth time he actually will,” Nathaniel said. 

“And here I was just about to possibly get more good Ted stories,” Anita said, apparently unconcerned about any threats to Peter’s virtue. 

“Like how all the other dance moms love him because he can replicate just about any braid or bun type on the first try after watching a Youtube video? He has mad skills in many ways,” Peter said. 

“That’s a good one,” Anita said. 

“Or the driving lessons. It started out with practicing on normal streets just after I got my learner’s permit and then we eventually both got cocky or something and he got permission to use the pad the sheriffs department uses and he decided it was a good idea to teach me J turns. Which, maybe not so much but neither of us was going to admit it. When I started out, it was all Ted there, but I wasn’t really getting the rhythm right and he was starting to get a pretty firm hold on the grab bar. Not that he’d admit it outright, but every time I’d go down the pad, he’d say something like ‘Almost. Do it Again’ and each time it was a little less Ted saying that to me until the point where it was all Edward giving the instructions. 

We finally called it a day after a while, and were supposed to meet up the next day for another lesson, but then I got a text from him saying that a job in the Dakotas had come up quickly and I should get in touch with Sheriff Martinez for the next lesson. He claimed it was entirely a coincidence the job came up but I consider it to be a rare win for me. Who would have thought that Death could actually be scared by a teenage driver?” He got amusement from Anita, and laughs from Nathaniel, Syn, Dev, and a Marco who couldn’t quite keep a proper bodyguard straight face. 

“Speaking of driving, it’s not a bad time to be heading out,” Nathaniel said. Peter took his chance to duck back into the guest suite and pee as Anita and Nathaniel got together for their kiss goodbye and by the time he came back to the living room, she had headed out to work for the night. 

In addition to Syn, Dev, and Marco, Wyatt from the Florida trip joined them in the Suburban they used to get from Anita’s house back into St. Louis proper. Eventually they arrived at the club, which was big enough to have both a VIP entrance and parking lot, and Peter did his best to stay out of the way as Marco and Wyatt moved Nathaniel inside. 

“Glad you could make it with your friends tonight,” a slightly built dark-haired man was telling Nathaniel as Peter blinked to try to get his eyes to adjust to the lighting in the club.

“You do a great job making a space where everyone can have an awesome time. It’s an easy choice when I want to go out on one of my nights off. Peter, this is Gordon, who is majority owner of Carnivale. We’re showing Peter the sights while he’s around.”

“Good to meet you,” Peter said. 

“Same,” Gordon said. The other man seemed like he wanted to talk more but he got pulled away to deal with some club business before he could. 

“Where are the exits in here?” Peter asked. “Mrs. Suarez’s fifth grade class and her non-fiction books section that was only about awful disasters complete with pictures of the Coconut Grove fire taught me to always know how to get out of wherever you go into.” 

“Either side of the stage, behind the bar, just past the secondary restrooms,” Wyatt rattled off a longer list in something of a monotone. “No good cover in the parking lot so you’re taking your own chances out there.”

“And now that’s taken care of, there are some people we’re supposed to be meeting up with here” Nathaniel said, taking Peter by one arm and pulling him into the main lounge part of the club, his eyes scanning the crowd for those others. A red-haired woman caught Nathaniel’s eyes, waved, and they made their way to meet up with her group. 

“Hey, Moira!” Nathaniel projected his voice over music that got louder the further into the club they got. “Here’s the Peter I told you about. We decided he needed to have some fun while he was in St. Louis looking at colleges.” 

“Moira Riley,” she said offering a quick handshake. “Short blonde with me is Maria and tall blonde is Leslie. We all met up in dance class a few years back and got into the habit of clubbing together back then. Sometimes you just want to go out and dance and feel the music and not get hit on too much and we kind of block for each other when it comes to jerks who won’t take a ‘no’ for an answer.” 

“Makes sense,” he said. Even though he had a whole bunch of reasons not to try to hook up with someone without getting to know them really well, he still felt a brief moment of disappointment that the idea was probably off the table from the start. And then before he could really say anything more, he was getting pulled into the main dance area by Syn and Maria and the music and dancing was good enough to make an entire night of it even if he would just be going back to the guest room after they left the club. 

The DJ was spot on, mixing up some familiar songs with ones he hadn’t before, and he even managed to not be too annoyed by the techno version on ‘Carry On Wayward Son’ that always seemed a little too on point for his tastes. It was crowded enough that he quickly found himself in close quarters with the rest of the group, spending only a few seconds being glad that he wasn’t one of the people stuck with bodyguard duty for Nathaniel in the middle of the scrum before refocusing on his now here and now and the joy of moving to the music along with those around him. 

Midway through the set, he felt the first bump against his back from Dev followed by the tiger moving close and closer toward him. Peter had spent enough time with shifters to know that nothing Dev was doing was considered to be outside of polite manners and yet it had the feel of someone who was trying to send him a message. He glanced briefly at Dev, who responded with a look that was even parts innocence and challenge, before sliding himself in between Syn and Leslie. 

The group used a pause between DJs as an excuse to go get some drinks in the quieter bar area, ending up at a big round table surrounded by a padded booth seating area. Peter found himself toward the middle in between Dev and Maria, noticing that Maria’s cheekbones made him think she was more likely to have a Russian grandmother than a Latina one. 

“So how did you meet Nathaniel?” she asked him.

“My stepfather and his Anita work together on some cases, and we’d get talking while waiting for them to get back from those. You?”

“As Moira said, dance class.” They were interrupted by a waiter taking drink orders. Part of his mind noted that going through the VIP entrance mean no one had ended up checking his driver’s license and that Nathaniel still went with soda water even when there were so many other things that tasted better than would have no effect on a shifter at all. 

“I’ve got this round,” Peter said, pulling one of Peter Black’s credit cards out of his wallet and passing it to the waiter. “Gotta pay back Nathaniel for letting me stay at his place while I’m in town.” 

“He said you were looking at colleges out here?” she said just as he felt Dev’s hand brush up against his outer lower thigh. 

“Yeah,” It was a reasonably easy cover story to use for those who were interested in why he was in St, Louis. “It’s not like the schools back in New Mexico are bad, it’s just that I want to know what more of the options are.” The hand on his leg moved just a little bit upward and a little bit inward. 

“So who’s on your list while you’re here?” He decided that if Dev wanted to mess with him then he was going to do the same in return. He spread his hips wider, moving that leg underneath the table close to Dev even as he otherwise seemed to ignore the other man

“The usual suspects like Washington U, St. Louis University, SIU, Webster, Lindenwood. If I come out here, a lot of the reason would be because I like the city already, and I’m trying to get a feel for what kind of school within the area would be a good fit and all.” He felt the hand continue its march to a different point on his inner thigh. 

“I’m a senior at St. Louis University. Picked it because not only were the academics good, but I also wanted to cheer in college and they gave me a little bit of an athletic scholarship for that.” She paused to take a few sips of her beer and Peter felt the hand reach the crease here his leg and groin met. Which was increasingly becoming a problem because Dev knew exactly the right place along that line to stroke in order to draw a certain reaction from a fully functional guy. 

“Do you like it there? I mean obviously a little since you’re still there for senior year and all?” He was not going to give Dev the satisfaction of showing just how he felt about what that hand was doing, even as a part of him wanted to just move sideways just a little more so that it would brush up against a part of him that was about to start to twitch from the attention. 

“Yeah, it’s been a great school for me. If you’ve got the time while you’re here, we could get together for just coffee or lunch and I can give you a better tour of campus and the surrounding area than what you’d get from the Admissions office. We can get each other’s phone numbers now and work the rest of it out later?” 

“Sounds good.” he said. As he twisted his hips around to extract the phone from his back pocket, he moved the center of his groin briefly toward Dev and then pulled back even quicker. Message sent that Dev may want it but he wasn’t going to get to have it. Phone numbers were programmed into the other person’s phone and he was able to send a second hip thrust in Dev’s direction as he put the device back into his pocket. “So what’s your major?”

“Chemistry. They didn’t have a pre-med degree and it was a simpler path to get all my prerequisites for med school that way.”

There was more small talk as they finished their beers and the hand settled at a point where it was almost but not quite touching where Peter’s cocked lurked underneath his jeans. It was like Dev was waiting for him to make the next move even as Peter kept trying to pretend he could ignore it had ended up where it had. 

“Time to get back on the dance floor,” Nathaniel declared from his spot in the booth. 

“You do move well,” Maria told him. “Better than a lot of guys. Did you ever take dance lessons?”

“My little sister’s big into dance and it used to be she’d come home from class and it made her happy to try to teach me what she’d been learning so we did that.”

“But not any more?”

“She got really into ballet and I do martial arts,” he started as he slid out of the booth and stood up. 

“And what you do with your ankle flexibility in ballet doesn’t mix with what you need to do in karate or whatever it is,” she continued.

“Yeah, so better to not try to play in both because of the mixed signals.” 

He felt a pang of regret as the group moved back toward the dance floor. Maria was pretty and kind and smart in the right ways and he was sure that she’d go from seeming to like him to really hating him if she knew more about him and who he really was. 

And then the music swallowed them all up and before too long he found himself close next to Dev again, the other man using the crowded in the club to drape an arm around his waist and put a hand resting against his right hip bone as they bounced to the beat of the song. 

A new song brought a tempo change and a thumb that cautiously slid along the top of the waistband of his jeans. At that moment, Peter chose to lean into the embrace rather than pulling away, and was rewarded with the thumb first moving in between jeans and underwear and then slowly making its was toward his zipper, Dev’s fingers later sliding between his underwear and bare skin. 

More music sent them further apart and then in range to touch again, with Peter reaching out for the first time to cradle Dev’s rear in one of his hands. He saw Dev chuckle amid the noise and strobe lights, something that made Peter want to take what had started out as a game of chicken to another level. From that point on, everything Dev did on the dance floor was reciprocated and by the time the group decided to call it a night, he was really wound up, 

In the scramble to stay out of the way fo the bodyguards hustling Nathaniel into the Suburban he found himself snug up against Dev in the back row of the SUV. Despite the fitness of the some light, he saw the other man learn forward to him. 

Peter made his decision then, meeting him more than halfway to the kiss as he grabbed the other man’s ponytail in order to position him how he wanted to be. The first kiss was barely a brush of the lips before he heard a bored- sounding Wyatt remind them of seatbelts. The second kiss was an open mouth discovery of just how far you could go and still comply with all the rules of automotive safety. As was the third one and all the ones that followed on the drive back to the Jefferson County house. 

**********

“There’s always room here for another overnight guest here if you want,” Nathaniel said before he was moved from the Suburban to the house. Syn followed him in, leaving Peter and Dev briefly alone in the vehicle. 

“And what fo you want?” Dev asked. 

“For you to come inside with me,” he said. “And not just for late night coffee.”

“That sounds like something I would like too,” Dev said. “But first, you know stoplight colors?”

“Yeah.”

“Use them if we seem to be going too fast for you. As for me, I like it rough without being into pain.”

“Got it,” he said, appreciating at how much better shifters were about talking about what they wanted in sex than humans usually were. 

They made their way quickly into the house and into the guest room, Peter making a sharp turn so he could press Dev’s body up against the wall, his wrists above his head and snug against the drywall. He ran his tongue along Dev’s throat and was rewarded with small whimpering noises and hips that buckled against his groin. Dev pulled one wrist free then, sliding as much of his hand down the back of Peter’s jeans and cupping the bare skin of his ass. 

“We’re both wearing way too many clothes for this tiger’s taste,” Dev said before he moved to untangle himself from Peter snd the wall and to quickly strip everything off his body. 

As Peter hesitated for a moment, Dev ducked briefly into the bathroom, and that small amount of space gave him the courage to take everything off for someone who was still something of a stranger. But Dev didn’t seem to even give a glance to his scars as he dropped something on the nightstand and then pulled Peter down onto the bed. 

They ended up in a tangle of bodies and limbs as they explored each other’s bare skin, Peter feeling surprised at how not weird it was to feel Dev’s erection brush up against his own. Then Dev continued to kiss him, one hand exploring not only Peter’s cock and balls but also the spot just below that. 

He was surprised at how nice that felt as well and he soon found himself making small happy sounds around a mouthful of Dev’s collarbone. 

Dev took this as permission to explore even further inward, fingers penetrating territory Peter wasn’t entirely sure about at all. He felt himself start to go soft despite Dev’s best efforts both down below and with the lips on his throat, the sensations odd and uncomfortable enough that Peter started to consider tapping out. 

And Dev found the right spot and Peter started to discover what all the fuss was about, the message going from uncomfortable to ‘more please’. He started to get hard again as he moved around to try to give Dev easier access to hit that perfect place, 

“But wait, there’s more,” Dev said, coming up for air. Peter let Dev move him into a position where he was on his hands and knees on the bed. He heard the sound of a condom wrapper ripping outside his field of vision followed by a pause. 

“Green, green green,” he panted, not wanting to let his arousal slip away. 

“I so love that kind of eagerness,” Dev said and then Peter felt something wet and hard slide inside him as a hand reached around the front of him to cradle his erection. Once more, it took Dev a few strokes to get the angle correct before he began to hit that spot in all the right ways. A few strokes beyond that he found himself urging Dev to go harder and faster with the other man quickly obliging in a way that sent them both into a climax before Peter felt like he could really breathe again. 

He opted to go into the bathroom for a quick clean up before he would allow himself to collapse onto the bed. A still naked Dev was flopped sideways on the bed when he came out, the condom presumably tossed into the trash can under the desk. He saw the other man’s eyes briefly look over the old wounds across his chest, something that made Peter want to make a quick recovery of wherever his shirt had ended up. 

“C’mon here,” Dev said, reaching one arm out toward him. 

Peter found himself looking down at the lines that remained from where the were had cut him up. 

“Everyone’s got scars. With some people, it’s the ones you can see and with other people it’s the ones you can’t,” Dev said. 

“Okay,” he said, opting for bed instead of shirt and sliding next to Dev. “You seem to be making yourself comfortable.”

“This time of night, half the drivers on the road are probably drunk, the other half are tired enough to count as dangerously distracted, and it seems like a far better plan to curl up next to a guy I just had a great time with instead of courting death on a St. Louis highway.” 

“Sounds good to me too,” he said, moving around a little to try to get more comfortable. “Since I had to get up too early to catch my flight, I think I’ve been up twenty hours straight at this point.” 

He wouldn’t describe himself as having some sort of kink about having sex with shapeshifters, but as long as they were the ones who seemed like they wanted to get closer to him after sex instead of running away screaming at that point, he was inclined to keep looking for affection in places like that. 

***********

He awoke the next morning feeling warm, safe, and secure except for his right arm, which was feeling pins and needles. 

“Rachel, you’re awesome but you’re cutting off the circulation,” he half-mumbled as he tried to extract himself from under the other body.

“Who’s Rachel?” the man in bed with him asked, sitting up to relieve the pressure he had been putting on Peter’s arm. 

“Aw shit. Not you,” Peter said trying not to panic at his obvious screw-up. “Sorry about that. Rachel’s a friend with benefits in a mutually non-exclusive way. Also a werewolf whose body temperature runs warm like yours does so I woke up that toasty and I guess it was habit or something.” 

“No worries,” Dev said. 

He was spared a little bit of awkwardness by the alarm on his phone going off at that point. 

“Is there some place you need to be this morning?” Dev asked. 

“Not really. Emmanuel’s supposed to be picking me up around lunch time and I was just going to hang out at the house until then. I just forgot to turn it off before going to bed.”

“I wonder why,” 

“The possibilities are endless,” Peter said as he rolled out of bed with the idea of taking a nice shower. He knew how he should have felt that morning and it was different than he felt at that moment. “I’m not sore.”

“If you feel like I didn’t pound you into the mattress hard enough last night, I’m always up for another round.”

“Not that kind of sore,” he said, hoping he wasn’t blushing as hard as he felt like it probably looked. “But when I was working out before I came over to the house, I had some really hard landings. Jake’s really good at pulling his punches when he’s up against a person who is somewhat human but gravity is an evil bitch that doesn’t give a damn and when I was working out back home lately, I wasn’t going nearly as hard as I did yesterday and I’d feel a lot creakier the next morning.”

“So since you started throwing inconclusive blood tests, you’re healing faster like us,” Dev said, the expression on his face getting more serious than Peter had seen from him previously. “So I’m now wondering if that might mean you heal more like us in general.”

“Like how lycanthropes tend to run a fever when they’re trying to recover from big damage?” There had been a point during his most recent hospital stay when they’d done frequent blood draws to check for a lycanthropy positive so they’d know how to best treat him if his temperature suddenly spiked. 

“And how we heal faster and better with physical contact from our own kind and one of your exposures was for tiger.” 

“Maybe that is the case,” he said. “I guess it’s one more thing to write down when I send in the monthly summary to Sophie.”

“Sophie?”

“She’s a shifter with a day job working for the CDC and a friend of Micah somehow. He’s got her in charge of collecting data from lycanthropy double exposures like me to try to track what happens to us, how many of us go full blown positive eventually, and how much the human doctors fucked up in general by deciding that it would be a good idea to start exposing people to a second strain of lycanthropy so close to the first exposure. So far, there aren’t any clear indicators of what changes in our bodies and makes some of us go from pretty much zero viral count to shifter but she does say that if you hit the inconclusive stage, it gets really hard to get a buzz and the three beers last night aren’t nearly enough for even that. You also don’t get acne anymore. And I’m sure that if the human researchers doing the same thing find that one out, there will shortly be a drug company out there trying to make a profit off that somehow.”

He tried to keep the anger out of his voice but it was hard. There were probably people who had ended up dead out there because someone else had turned furry unexpectedly when they thought they had been in the clear after exposure. 

“Probably. But in the mean time, I need a shower and you’re more than welcome to join me.” The look in Dev’s eyes was back to that same mix of challenge and desire that had sent him down that pathway the night before. 

“If I’m going second, I don’t want the hot water running out on me, I guess,” he said.

Which was how he found himself under a spray of water just a little hotter than he usually liked with Dev kneeling in front of him, his hands pulling through Dev’s hair as the other man worked on swallowing Peter’s cock. By the end of it he was wobbly enough that he was leaning on years of martial arts training to keep his balance. 

Then they were back in the bedroom, Peter putting on fresh clothes from his duffel bag and Dev threw on pants and shirt from the night before. 

*******

Together they made their way to the kitchen to find Anita sitting at the table drinking a cup of coffee. The more lizard part of Peter’s brain that always seemed to notice such things saw the silk short green robe and short nightgown she was wearing and decided that it wasn’t the worst thing in the world that Dev had taken the edge off certain parts of his body before he saw her looking like that. The rest of his brain felt a moment of panic at trying to explain the man following behind him. 

“Um, good morning?” he managed, trying his best to remember his manners toward one of his hosts. 

“Good morning,” she said, giving him a small smile he though she meant to be reassuring, “Nathaniel gave me a heads up on our overnight guest when I got back from the cemetery. I didn’t know you were bisexual.” 

“I don’t think so.”

“Gay?”

“Definitely not.”

“Just past a one on the Kinsey scale with a short list of exceptions?” Dev offered quickly enough that it probably wasn’t the first time he’d said it.

“I guess that works as well as anything. Maybe I was having a lot of fun and didn’t want the night to end. Maybe you knew just which of my buttons to push.” Or maybe it had happened because a part of him wanted a first time that was entirely on his own terms, not that Peter could ever tell Anita that. 

“Moving on, would you like some coffee? Nathaniel trusts me to start a pot before he makes it down to cook breakfast.” 

“Yeah, that would be good. With lots of sugar?” He didn’t love coffee but it gave everyone something to do in the middle of the sudden awkwardness. 

“I’ll have one too,” Dev said. 

“Triple cream, no sugar?” she said. 

“Always glad when you remember,” Dev said. “And I hope that you also remember that you were one of many people in our group who were encouraging me to see other people so I didn’t get fully sucked up into Asher’s vortex of neediness again.” 

In their group. The meaning behind that hit him just as Anita put the coffee mug in front of him. He buried he face in his hands and counted to twenty in Spanish and then the Arabic that Edward was encouraging him to learn as his third language before looking up again. 

“I didn’t realize he was part of your family. Course I’ve tried to come up with a list before of who was, and it ended up as a diagram that looked like a dilithium crystal,” he said, looking up just far enough to see the coffee mug.

“You know, that’s not a bad description. Just put me kind of on the edge rather than part of the core of the crystal, ” Dev said, revealing a little bit of an inner geek. ”But how could you miss the good bye kiss I got from Anita last night?”

“He was in the bathroom when we did,” Anita said. A different little bit of Peter’s brain was impressed with her situational awareness even in a casual situation. “And yes, I remember the conversations about not letting the infatuation with Asher overwhelm everything else again. And as long as everything that happened between the two fo you was safe, sane, and consensual?”

“Yes.”

“It was.” 

“The I hope it was good for both of you,” she said. Which was not exactly the response that he had been expecting despite some conversations that he’d had with Nathaniel about how his family generally worked on a day to day basis. He felt himself start to blush again. “No response is necessary for that, by the way.”

“I tried to be a gentleman,” Dev said, 

“You? Never.” Anita said, briefly leaving him in peace to contemplate the grain of the wood on the kitchen table. 

Which was then interrupted by Nathaniel’s arrival and the second wave of awkwardness since Peter was now sure that Dev had been having sex with Nathaniel too. Maybe what he had done with Dev wasn’t a big deal in their group, but it still felt weird for him to somehow share Dev with people who were entirely platonic friends. A part of him wanted to turn how he felt into anger the made more sense, but he couldn’t afford to do that and lose some of the few friends he could really talk to about the grey to dark parts of who he was. 

“He’s frowning,” Nathaniel sad. 

“Not my fault,” Dev said. 

“But what did I tell you?” Nathaniel said, sounding a little angry for a reason Peter couldn’t quite figure out yet. 

“That you didn’t think I had a chance with the cute sunburned guy in the wedding pictures but that anything did happen, he damn better have a smile on his face at breakfast the next morning,” Dev said, caution in his voice as Peter realized that Nathaniel had gotten protective over his feelings. 

“What happened is that I don’t know as much about how everyone is connected to each other in St. Louis as people thought I did and it got a little weird when I found out that Dev is part of the family. It’s going to be okay though.” Peter said. Because it was, and because he had been starting to like Dev quite a bit and didn’t want to be the source of friction between Dev and his other friends and lovers. 

“Let’s do some breakfast then,” Nathaniel said, giving Peter a quick squeeze on the shoulder before pulling Dev toward the fridge and stove and leaving him back at the table with Anita and the coffee. 

“So, um, Ted doesn’t need to know about this, does he?” 

“It’s your call if you want to say anything to him. Or not say anything to him. The only time I’d say anything to him is if it looked like it would matter in an investigation or other situation and that’s not likely to happen.”

“Thanks. Ted gets the violent side of me, but when it comes to him and Mom…”

“Living the conventional suburban dream lifestyle?” 

“Yeah. Which usually works well for them and they’re happy together most of the time. But we’re just really different kinds of people in some other ways.”

“And different isn’t bad but it it does make thing harder when you’ve got to figure out a bunch of things on your own rather than having a nice list of preformed rules you can follow down the path to happiness. The good news is that it the payoff is worth a lot more than the effort, ” she said, sending a look toward Nathaniel that he hoped some other woman would love him enough to have that look fo him someday.

“I’m glad you’ve got your family like Ted has Mom,” he said as he watched Dev start to cook bacon and Nathaniel do prep work for some sort of egg thing. 

“Ted’s got you too. You need to be so careful out there because if anything happens to you, I think he’d go full time Edward.” 

“I’m not sure.”

“I’ve seen the mask slip on him and he’s let me see how much you and Becca matter to him.”

“And how much you matter to him too. But when you’re working together, I still feel good about it even on the cases from hell because I know how much you’ll do to watch each other’s back.” Why couldn’t she feel the same about him and Edward hunting together? “And hey, he married into Team Parnell, who are magnets for violence and bad shit in their own right. Becca’s taking self-defense classes along with Mom now. We all try to pretend that it’s because she’s being told that she might be good enough to dance in the big city, and unless you’re Misty fucking Copeland or something, dancers usually can’t afford to live in a great part of town, but we all know that it’s because she’ll always be Becca Parnell even if she’s going to star using Becca Forrester.” 

He watched a few different emotions flick across Anita’s face before she tried to latch back onto a somewhat safer for breakfast topic. 

“Does that make you Peter Forrester then?” 

“Ted’s the only father that Becca’s ever known. I remember John Francis Parnell and changing my name would make me feel like I was erasing the sacrifice he made for me. And while I know the name Ted Forrester has gotten me in the door for a bunch of situations I otherwise wouldn’t have, I like to pretend that once I made the move from kiddie table to adult one, I stayed there because I earned it from that point on and not because of family connections. There are things I’m getting very good at.” 

“But not everything.”

“Believe me, it’s Edward who makes sure I don’t get complacent or arrogant about work.” 

Sin’s arrival back home from an early morning workout followed by the appearance of hearty plates of food managed to change direction of the conversation to something lighter and Peter welcomed the chance to kind of fade back into the woodwork instead of being the ongoing center of attention. He let himself get pulled into the easy banter among Anita and her men that continued through clean-up and dishes. 

And then he found himself walking though the living room with Dev, who had to head back into St. Louis for work. 

“I had a good time last night and this morning, and I’m not going to push, but if you want to get together again before the rats head out, you’ve got my number and we could see if we can get out schedules to line up,” Dev said. 

“That, that could be good,” Peter said. 

Dev leaned in and kissed him at that point. It wasn’t the blatant seduction of the night before, but more of a maybe. Given how many options Peter had felt like he’d lost in his life in the past few months, he welcomed the maybes as part of a tiger group of new possibilities. 

“Or should I say very good?” Peter asked.

Dev chuckled a little and then headed out toward the front door, but a little bit of the warmth that Peter had felt from him seemed to linger against his skin.


End file.
